A large, comprehensive plan that addresses our long-term structural deficits is clearly the best way forward for America’s future economy. However, more modest proposals, which would begin to take meaningful steps towards putting our debt on a sustainable path, would also be worthwhile.

Even as Congressional leaders and the president discuss a potential temporary solution to the current stalemate over the government shutdown and the debt ceiling, the repeated cycle of lurching from crisis to crisis has significant and real costs to the U.S. economy.